On Sunday, I learned to shave poor Max. Doesn't he look more comfortable?


We realized how much this is true:
  ¶ 10:26 AM

  Yesterday, I had a busy day, culminating a very busy week.

The Store Opened with the ceremonial yanking of the sheets. The store is of course Holiday Yarns, owned and operated by Gwynivar with help from Eric and Nora, and occasionally myself and a few other generous people. I should mention Twiggi was working there most of Saturday as well. She came up the night before and helped Jen dye and other things.

The yarn wall (bear in mind, this is only Holiday Yarns brand - there is much more than this. I have more pictures of the store, but I don't know how many will choke Blogger.

One of the roving sections. Yes, One of Many. There's a place to build a batt too, and the drum carder will be set up this week!

Setting up to dye. Part of Saturday was a Ravelry party where dying yarn was encouraged and at least 8 skeins were dyed, and I think it ended up with more than that done. There were customers who wandered through who hadn't heard of the store before yesterday standing in the periphery and watching as well. But most of the people had heard of Nora and wanted to dye with her.

The Master at work, with Enigma on the left.

Got yarn?  ¶ 5:11 AM

  I am essentially a lazy person. I have always been the one who prefers to avoid exercise I don't like. My favorite exercise of all time is swimming, and if I had the chance I would swim every day. However, thanks to this chemical sensitivity problem I have, I can't breathe around chlorine any more, and that makes swimming daily very difficult. The lakes around here tend to freeze over, and our bathtub isn't big enough to do laps. I did go to Curves for a while, but that is complicated by the fact that other people don't like the smell of sweat and therefore wear perfume to cover it up, and the gym itself liked to decorate with scented candles and if you put them by machines I'm trying to use, I can't breathe. There's always walking, and I do try to help with the walking of the dogs (and really Ought to do more but 7 AM is a bit early and the dogs don't like to wait for my lazy ass to get out of bed), but there's often the scent of laundry in the air (DAMN YOU GAIN!), and soon the flowers will be out. They are indeed gorgeous, and smelly.

So my solution has been to get an exercise ball. I sit on it for an office chair. No arms to rest my arms upon - so I don't get pressure induced numbness like ulnar tunnel syndrome or carpal tunnel syndrome. Unfortunately, they are vinyl and smelly for a couple of weeks out of the box which makes me headachey and I tend to pop them every six months or so. The first time I popped one it just scared me. But over the weekend, I landed just exactly wrong on my tailbone and the bugger still hurts. I know it'll fade and there's no lasting damage and I didn't break anything. I just wanted to whinge. And I miss having a chair I can wiggle on at the moment, because the new ball has to go in time out so it stops being smelly. (In addition to the extreme pain getting up from the seated position from the ball). The more I move, the less it hurts, so there's a fine line between hobbling and actual fluid movement. I Will get better. It's just right now I have more than my usual pain in the ass.  ¶ 1:10 PM

  This whole teabagging thing bothers me on many levels. First there's the entire futility of the thing - our country's circumstances are NOT going to change because someone mailed a Congress critter a bag of loose leaf.

Then there's my concern about the root of the quest - are they truly trying incite a revolution by protesting an unfair tax as they did during the days before the Revolution? There is no unfair tax on Tea at the moment. I'm pretty sure all the tea flowing into DC at the moment has had all taxes paid. Because one of the rules of Effective protest (to Me) involves not being arrested for theft.

Or are they going for the modern reference - which the main blogs dance around and the mainstream media dare not discuss. Teabagging as a gaming term is much more incendiary and offensive. Calling Obama a "pantywaist" is nothing on stuffing nutsacks. It's only a hair kinder than calling him a "damn n-----" and certainly many of the uptight conservatives I know understood what that meant they would be embarrassed to mail anyone a teabag.

I almost want to mail the instigators of this offensive stunt some coffee. So they can wake up and smell some. Offending people does NOT sway them to your side. It only puts them off further. It closes doors to discussion. And the only way for conservatives, let alone the Republican Party, to get anything done until the next election is by having conversations and learning to bend and work with others.

If you truly don't like where your tax dollars are going, there is the excellent example given in Civil Disobedience by Henry David Thoreau. Sure, he went to jail for not paying his taxes. You probably will too. Eventually. Of course, this seems to be a Democratic phenomenon (just see all references to failed cabinet posts by Obama), so perhaps Republicans won't let themselves consider it as a result.  ¶ 4:14 PM

  This is the spun Mint Mojito. Unfortunately, it ends up being a lot more uniform than the yarn did. The bottom skein is the rest of the three-ply, with some two ply and navajo to finish it off, and only 80 yards. The top is a uniform 3-ply of 180 yards. It'll go nicely with the Bingo Rose handspun, and I hope to make a shrug out of it for myself- since Her What Lives Next Door got my other shrug - and that's fine with me because I didn't like that shrug very much.

  ¶ 8:05 PM

  This picture is for Lisa, so she can see the difference in the old bobbin from the Ashford Traditional wheel versus the same amount of fiber on the bobbin of the Minstrel. This means of course there will probably have to be another picture so y'all can see the finished plied yarn.

  ¶ 10:48 AM

  Once upon a time there was a box.

Well, perhaps the story begins earlier than that. It begins with knitting socks for someone so famous in the knitting world she doesn't have time to knit socks for herself. So I have. And I offered to do some more. So for a really huge scam, she said she would send me a wheel. I swear I did warn Jazz, but time passes and people forget and things don't seem real any more, because that's the safest way to avoid being disappointed.

I spent today away from home, in Syracuse working on the Holiday Yarns store. When I called home, Jazz said, "Honey, there's a box here. I think it has a loom in it." I reassured him there was no loom. The looms I have are a small table loom and a borrowed inkle loom, and that's all we fit in this tiny house. I know there is no loom. "But there's a box," he insisted. "It says it's a minstrel."

Images of bards in boxes go through my head for amusement sake. I hoped there was food and airholes and adequate sanitation. But at the same time, I was thinking, that's a Kromski. That gorgeous castle wheel the one guy was spinning alpaca at the one fiberfest was a Kromski. Castle wheels will fit better in the house than the saxony style. I bet it's got lots of pretty and fussy details without being girly.

I came home to Jazz far more intent on his upcoming events, and understandably so. We discussed tomorrow's schedule while I slowly pulled Polish newspaper out of The Box. I found editorial cartoons in Polish - I think they were editorial in nature because it looked it had hookers and guns and people praying to ATMs, and didn't look funny at all when one doesn't understand the words. But it amused me just the same. Mr. Basset shared the couch while I figured out the assembly.



And after Jazz took the dogs up to bed, I could not resist... It works just fine, with very little fuss.



I haz a happee.  ¶ 10:25 PM

  Today, shots were fired in Binghamton and the city near me is on the news. I'm sure friends will poke their nose in to see if I'm okay. I wasn't shot at, if that helps.

Today I don't want to feel sad and depressed and scared. I don't want to think about the hostages still in the building or their loved ones terrified for their sake. I don't want to worry about the cops trying to solve the problem. I do want to slap some of the media coverage of the event. I am angry that anyone would consider getting a gun and shooting people to solve their problems.

Is it wrong to just want the whole damn thing to go away and pretend it never happened? Have I become too numb to care?  ¶ 1:57 PM